Chainfire Does it Again; Removes Region Lock From Galaxy Note 3

For those that travel a lot, or just like the freedom of being able to swap networks when on holiday, a GSM device is the obvious choice. It’s much easier to get a decent deal away from home when you can simply slip whatever SIM card – within reason – into your fancy smartphone. Those in Europe will be used to this when going on holiday or travelling on business. Samsung however, has decided to put a Region Lock on their new Galaxy Note 3, and presumably new smartphones going forward. Essentially, if you buy a Note 3 in the UK, and activate it with a UK SIM, you should be able to use other SIMs around the globe, or so Samsung says. However, according to angry reports around the web, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Enter Chainfire, the developer many of you will know as improving many Samsung devices over the years. He’s back with a new tweak for the Galaxy Note 3, which removes this annoying Region Lock. His new app, RegionLock Away removes the region lock on Galaxy Note 3s and allows you to use whichever SIM you want. It should be noted that a Region Lock is not the same as a SIM Lock, so this will not SIM-Unlock your phone if a lock is present. A SIM Lock whitelists one carrier, whereas this region lock has a blacklist filled with countries and networks all over the globe.

You’ll need to be rooted, and using the MI7 firmware. Aside from that however, things should be relatively straightforward, especially if you know what you’re doing. You can head to the original thread on XDA and download the app, as well as leave a quick thank you. If you’d rather, you can download the app from the Play Store and help him out a little bit by hitting the Play Store button at the bottom of this post.

It’s been said that Samsung is looking to bring this to more devices going forward and contemplating backporting this “feature” to older smartphones that have been on shelves for some time. Hopefully, Chainfire can continue to support the device if Samsung pulled such a move.